…But in case there was any doubt, Obama’s reaction to our 75 IQ
Senator from the gambling capital of the West just helps seal the deal.
Shouldn’t Obama at least have had the common decency to point out the
obvious? The “obvious” is that Reid is at least an anachronistic
confused fool. For what it’s worth, I did not like Trent Lott’s
comments either, as much as they could have easily been excused away.
But this is not about Lott, because the Republican Party punished Lott
for his comments. The Democrats,
on the other hand, praise Reid for his apology, even as I am quite sure
he has no clue what he is apologizing for. I am also not surprised the
same groups who attacked Mitt Romney for being Mormon, didn’t slither
out of the DC garbage bins to accuse Reid’s Mormon religion for its
overly white sensibility. Time magazine “delicately” referred to this
as Romney’s Mormon Question. read more…

January 08, 2010

Leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including Said al-Shihri second from the left.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Muslim Nigerian “charged”
with the failed attempt on the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight now has a
public defender. So we will be hearing a lot about “allegedly this and
that” for the next few years. He will be tried in criminal court
instead of a military tribunal despite the fact that “he was trained,
equipped and directed by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” according to Senator Lieberman.

The Left has always been consumed more by domestic politics over
military affairs, at least since the Vietnam War. Victor Davis Hanson
of National Review Online notes that one-third of all terrorist plots
since 2001 occurred last year, 2009. This has happened even as the Obama administration
has nominally kept most of the Bush-Cheney policies in place, including
those most loudly objected to by the left; the Patriot Act, renditions,
military tribunals, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But there is
a difference between a nominal policy and the degree to which one’s
will is committed to them. read more…

December 21, 2009

The Obama administration's replacement for Guantanamo Bay. This will protect America

Special Report’s lead story Wednesday evening was
the remarkable saga that is now called “Gitmo.” my nominee for the
first annual “Non-Sequitur Policy of the Year” award (NSPY, pronounced
“nespy”, rhyming with ESPN’s ESPY award). Not a very catchy title,
perhaps, but appropriately utilitarian in form and function. This first
annual award goes to the policy which most epitomizes the absurdity of
left wing activist government. It was not an easy choice. continue at NewsReal…

December 15, 2009

Dick Wolf has fallen from the heights as a writer on “Hill Street Blues,” a supervising producer of “Miami Vice” and the creator/producer of the once-excellent “Law and Order” trilogy. The flagship of the “Law and Order” series is “Law and Order,” the two other shows being “SVU” (Special Victims Unit) and “CI”(Criminal Intent). Perhaps 20 years is too long for any series, but “Law and Order” has devolved into the cheapest form of left-wing paranoid delusion. It is so obvious, it gives left-wing propaganda a bad name. Maybe Karl Rove planted a mole. I now watch it for its comedic satirical value, as one would watch “Saturday Night Live.”

Dick Wolf

The last episode was “Fed.” It’s a story about an ACORN-like community organizing group called “Rights Alliance.” The founder of the Rights Alliance has a conservative infiltrator murdered to “cover up a cover-up.” The cover up is an affair the founder was having with one of its members. The “cover up of the cover-up” was the money being paid by the founder to his mistress’s husband to keep the affair quiet. The right-wing infiltrator was murdered because he had been secretly video taping a sting he was arranging unrelated to the affair–clearly meant to be reminiscent of the O’Keefe/Giles real life ACORN investigation. The founder feared this tape would open the organization up to scrutiny, thus exposing his affair and the subsequent monetary extortion to his girlfriend’s husband. We are not supposed to be shedding too many tears for our murder victim, given he was “tricking a few dumb kids in an ambush video.” (more at Big Hollywood…)

December 13, 2009

AMC’s The Prisoner was awful. The headache inducing flashbacks, incomprehensible sudden and rapid scene changes, incessant and interminable runs through the desert to find the sea, the ever present morose gay son, “11-12,” of “2,” and the lack of any plot tension made the show almost unwatchable. But watch it I did, because I wanted to know both 2’s reasons and the technology that helped create “the Village.” The answer was preposterous. I should have read a “spoiler” review instead.

I never watched the original 1960’s television show, so had no particular expectations. The Prisoner is about a technology company, “Summaker,” which identifies people it presumes need help. It kidnaps them and places them in an induced hallucinogenic state. The hallucination is the “Village,” which looks like a human-sized toy town. The kidnapped live out their lives in a dreary hallucinogenic sameness with identical small pink houses, ambition free jobs, and some sense that all is ok. Villagers are unaware, mostly, they live in a hallucination, although many have odd “dreams” about their past. Dreamers are hunted down and sent down bottomless holes that appear in the ground. We are led to believe they are gone and dead. (Do they go back to the real world?). (more at Big Hollywood…)

Oh,
I'm sorry. Did I break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that.
Please, continue. You were sayin' something about "best intentions"?
What's the matter? Oh, y-you were finished? Oh, well, allow me to
retort!

Think Quentin Tarantino instead of Frank Baum. When the curtain is
pulled back, Oz has a gun. In an imaginary Tarantino version of the
“Wizard of Oz,” Dorothy and her pals are in mortal danger for exposing
the fraud which was the Wizard. But deception in our times
does not lead to reflection and redemption, as it did in the Wizard of
Oz. Instead, we witness a ruthless doubling down on the deception.

Within a week of the “hide the decline” revelations from the Wizards
of Anglia, the climate warming ideologues and plutocrats went to DEF
CON 1. In the ”fake but accurate” world of climate science, their
Oz-like actions may have been unethical, unscientific, fraudulent, and
non-replicable, but they are still the gospel truth, “so help
us Richard Dawkins.” read more at NewsReal…

December 12, 2009

Of all the Griefs that harrass the Distrest, Sure the most bitter is scornful Jest(Samuel Johnson-1738)

Tiger's world has spun out of control. His latest "gambit" of indefinitely quitting golf is the only way to go. One might say, to twist a phrase borrowed from the above quoted Samuel Johnson, "family values are the last refuge of the adulterer". But I won't say that. For the purpose of this essay, I don't attribute to him any more cynicism or,
conversely, morality, than I would any normal human being. Here is my view of this whole thing, from his perspective, as of today that is.

A guy who serially cheats on his wife without guilt does not suddenly develop
guilt when caught. He suffers regret. His regret is that his perfect world
has been significantly disturbed. The nature of this perfect world had
been the entire "Tigerness" we all saw; endorsements, fame, admiration,
the satisfaction of the hunt for golf immortality, wife and kids
(without the restrictions of actually having to live with them all the
time); plus the Tigerness we did not see; all the sex he could
ever want. It is the "Tigerness" we saw, the once in a lifetime
mega-competitor, (call him "Super Ego Tiger" versus the
Tiger we did not see, "Id Tiger"), that got him his endorsements and
the
global admiration. He has lost a big chunk of that admiration and is on
the precipice of losing all his endorsements. In a "marked to market
world", his endorsements have lost much value. No one is showing
Tiger ads.

Tiger's self imposed indefinite suspension from golf is all about getting popular opinion
back on his side. America is the land of forgiveness. Michael Vick gets
more attention
than any 3rd string QB in football history because he is on a forgiveness tour.
This happens all the time with celebrity. Tiger (let's call him
"Ego Tiger") is basically saying
something like the following to the world.

"The "Tigerness" you saw (Tiger without the serial adultery) is the
way one ("I") ought to be, even though I was not him. You, the public, were right to admire that
person. But I failed you and, more importantly, my family. I may never fully become that
person you thought you saw, but I will try. We all know the most important thing in life is family.
Before I can accomplish anything that matters---including golf---my
family first must be restored---or at least I must try everything to
make that happen. If I can't, then I alone will suffer the
consequences. Only when that effort has been made, can I then return to the
important, but secondary, work of being the greatest golfer ever".

Men who watch ESPN or Sports Center to get their Tiger News miss one vital cultural component to the "meaning of Tiger". The opinion of women will impact his rehabilitation. They may never trust him again, but he needs them to stop loathing him. Women find his actions disturbing and
threatening. "If he can do it, so can my husband/boyfriend". They liked
Tiger, but not anymore, for now at least.

Mens' opinion of Tiger may be more complex than that of women. Men who live like him
(re: serial sex, etc.) are just glad its not them who got caught. Men who
don't cheat are disappointed they lost such a great fellow chaste
"teammate". It does not matter what the great atheists of the 19th and
early 20th century thought (e.g., Freud and Nietzsche) about such
matters of Christian guilt and morals. Tiger lives in the "wheelhouse" of so called "common"
morality, which is America.

He is desperate to put the metaphorical cracked bowl of his life back together piece by piece. Why? Because Tiger wants the
admiration, the glory and the money. Now he is a laughingstock. But he does not want to be John Daley. He want to be "Tiger Woods". We cannot know if this is a cynical ploy, a sincere move, or a vain attempt at unnatural self suppression. I happen to believe it is easier to accomplish his objective as a true
believer. Then he does not have to remember all the lies he tells himself or others. Admittedly, it could become a holding pattern too. That is, he can go through the strenuous motions of trying to make his marriage work and then when it fails people will have at least believed he tried. But maybe he really wants to stay married. I certainly don't know. But the bottom line is he wants his old life
back--the Super Ego version. He will give up "Id Tiger" if he needs to, at least until some new relationship between he and the public develops.

If we have heard the worst of it (for example, we don't want to
hear about bi-sexual orgies) then this may succeed. But he must be
seen to be doing penance. Our fallen heroes, to be forgiven, must
suffer righteous penance. Just think Roman Catholic catechism, confession, and penance. One thing is for certain. Sports fans will flock back to Tiger. He just needs to show his fans he cares enough to suffer.

December 07, 2009

This was a send up on Joe Namath’s quip “I like my women blond and my Johnny Walker Red.” I almost never care or want to know anything about an athlete’s personal life, political opinions, peccadilloes, or anything beyond their contribution to winning the contest. It simply gets in the way of enjoying the sport. Athletes compete to win. Fans enjoy competition and gravitate toward those who win. This is why we watch sports. So I try to tune this other stuff out.

Sometimes you cannot. An extreme example is Michael Vick. In his “personal life,” he liked to kill dogs. Vick was one of the 3 most popular players in the NFL prior to being caught as the kingpin of dog fighting. I cannot watch Vick. He can apologize from now until doomsday but I will not watch him (accept, perhaps, to see him lose.) Interestingly, athletes have not received much attention from the sports press for extramarital affairs. It does not show up on the radar screen like steroid use, gambling, off field violence etc. Athletes are different than politicians in that sense. Super Bowl QB, Ben Rothlisberger, was even accused of sexual assault this summer, and it was a background story at best.

So why is the Tiger Woods story generating such heat? He may be the greatest athlete relative to his own sport in history. He is also a cultural figure, not merely a sports figure. His relationship with his father, in particular, has shaped our image of Woods as a strong “family values” person. I think if the story had been only what the National Enquirer had written, he might have skated by. But Elin Woods was not going quiet into the good night. Most people heard about the car accident before they knew of the Enquire article. Everything about the car accident story was bizarre in its own right. The combination was deadly.

All Tiger fans feel deflated, even me. We loved everything about the guy. As my wife –who is not a sports fan at all — said, “I am so disappointed.” Obviously, he is a different person than we thought. It is kind of a bummer. A few people even have tried to create a “personal is the political” gender story out of this. Hanna Rosin threw down the gauntlet with a self contradictory piece about gender-neutral domestic violence laws.

Others talk about how poorly Tiger has “handled” the story. What’s there to handle? He got caught cheating on his wife in front of the whole world. Both he and Elin feel humiliated, for different reasons of course. The last thing I want to see is some Mark Sanford style public apology. ..........read more here Tiger: As Cold As Ice‎

December 05, 2009

Editor’s Note: Please read part 1 here which explains some of the scientific reasons which the author does not agree with the global warming theory. In this second part he explains the heuristic reasons for not embracing the idea.

The term “heuristic” is used here as an intuitive judgment based on experiences. It’s the kind of thinking that says “when I see x, y typically follows.” When a policy message and the messenger have a self interested and/or anti-free market, anti-capitalism, and anti-American underpinning, I immediately become a skeptic. Here are several reasons why I “heuristically” disagree with the global warming hypothesis.

The left warned against global cooling in the 60’s and 70’s using the same “apocalypse soon” rhetoric we have today. Paul Ehrlich was the James Hansen of his day. When one reads the (increasingly left wing) Wikipedia entry on Ehrlich, we see revisionist interpretations. You see, his position was never “really” considered scientifically sound. He famously bet free-markets philosopher Julian Simon that commodity prices would be higher in 20 years than in 1980. He believed mankind was pillaging the earth and we were “running out” of resources. He was famously wrong. He now believes in global warming. read more…

December 03, 2009

On Fox’s Special Report Monday evening, Brit Hume made the central
argument against the politics and science of global warming: its
proponents have not yet made accurate predictions. Nor have they gotten
the concept straight. Is “global warming” or “climate change” the
problem?

I began writing about this issue years ago and always have been an extreme skeptic (Climate Change Fraud – Hollywood’s Silent Spring.) The data appeared doctored and the conclusions seemed preposterous. But my assumption had been it was due to extreme researcher bias,
not explicit fraud, as we now know is also true. Modern climate science
has become a political game of wealth transference. Future generations
will view AGW as we now view alchemy,
a “science” which Isaac Newton believed during his lifetime. I cannot
transfer my certainty to you, but I can explain why I think this way.
In part 1, I will discuss scientific reasons; and, in part 2, my heuristic reasons for this skepticism. read more…

November 26, 2009

Everything about Sarah Palin is magnified, as the current book tour
demonstrates. The book was number one the day it appeared for sale on
Amazon. All public figures have a larger than life appearance, but it
is far more pronounced with Palin. She is an almost unprecedented media
phenomenon. Yet few present her as a truly serious person. Democrats
attempt mockery and Republicans damn with faint praise. Those who
themselves praise her strongly are cast in a similar light. The great
paradox is, on the one hand, the media is driven to her like a moth to
flame, yet, on the other hand, they treat her as if she were not worthy
of all the attention.

This attitude comes from the same media which takes or has taken
Nancy Pelosi, Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards, Jon Corzine, and Joe
Biden seriously. Admittedly, these are low hurdle comparisons, but that
is exactly the point. Yet, to anyone who looks beyond the superficial
coverage, it is obvious that Palin knows exactly what image she wishes
to portray. Sarah Palin may or may not be a legitimate presidential
candidate, (she is, in my opinion); her tactics on this book tour may
or may not be helpful regarding future political ambitions (remains to
be seen); but she is completely and naturally in command of herself.
Yet this seemingly goes unobserved and flies in direct contradiction to
the dominant narrative.

November 17, 2009

NBC’s “Law and Order” is in its 20th season. The economy is weak, so
they have devolved to converting White House talking points into weekly
shows. Last week, “Doped” was a farcical equivalent of “Damien Thorn meets Karen Silkwood.”
Pharmaceutical companies and Doctors are worse than drug cartels. The
killers in the previous week’s episode on such cartels were more
sympathetic than the health professionals.

In the opening scene, a woman with 4 children is driving the wrong way down the West Side Highway (like the Diane Schuler Taconic Parkway horror
this summer). Speaking on her cell phone erratically (no “hands
free!”), the kids get concerned. She decides it is time to use nasal
spray for her allergies, which had been spiked without her knowledge.
Flash forward and viewers see two mangled vehicles resulting in seven
deaths.

November 16, 2009

In the last days of the Clintons’ empire of sleaze,
then Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder proactively assisted Clinton
in getting Marc Rich his “cash for pardon” deal done. Even Democrats
feigned outrage. We are supposed to believe Holder is “acting on his
own” when he decided to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in a civilian court. Admittedly, Obama is so self-obsessed it is believable he is not involved. But that’s why Rahm Emanuel exists. A hack like Holder does not make decisions of this magnitude on his own.

Watching
several days of commentary on Nidal Hasan’s (no, I will not call him
“Major Hasan”) Fort Hood massacre was painful. Evan Thomas of Newsweek
turned it into something about “right wingers.” Sally Quinn, widow of
Ben Bradley who writes a “Faith Column” for the Washington Post, wasn’t
sure what she thought, but was pretty sure we should not “jump to
conclusions.” Fox News actually congratulated itself, through Bill
O’Reilly, because the “Fox All-Stars” on Special Report were not
negative on Obama’s eulogy. Chief of Staff for the Army, George Casey says,

“As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

I don’t know
how the Ottoman or Roman Empires started to go south, but when a
nation’s intelligentsia become so lost in mindless constructs, it
can’t be a good sign. When quantum physicists attempt to translate
their measurements and mathematical deductions into everyday language,
they produce what appears to be an irreducible paradox which can say of
an object– “it is both here and not here”– at the same time. Physicists
had a choice to make. They could spend all their time philosophizing
about this seeming impossibility, or simply use a probably imperfect
model to make predictions. They of course chose observable measurements
over hypothetical ruminations and as such we have microchips and Hubble
space craft..............................

November 10, 2009

The “Mad Men” finale was a satisfying, although a bit too tidy, end
to its 3rd season. When I was 8, my teenage sister introduced me to a
card game called “52 Pick-Up.” When I handed her the deck, she tossed
cards across the room. As I whined, she said, “What else did you think
a card game called ‘52 Pick-Up’ was about?” When writers Weiner and
Levy created chaos with all my familiar characters in the opening
episode, I should have thought “52 Pick-Up.”

After all, they just had a merger for heaven’s sake. What else to
expect? Relationships between and among characters changed as work and
economic status changed, and they were reshuffled into new and less
pleasing ones. But we became gradually more accustomed to the new
“order,” although the dominant “feeling” was a cheerless dreariness.
There were some memorable moments. When a drunk Lois amputated the
erstwhile new Brit super star Guy MacKendrick’s foot with a John Deere
tractor in the office, I laughed out loud for minutes. Taken one show
at a time, they were good, but the cumulative gloom and doom became
stifling. (more…)

Karl Marx was a moron. Like so many intellectuals, he thrived in the
tree but was lost in the forest. His solution for mankind’s ills was to
simply invent a new being. The Marxo-Sapien
is a being that happily gives to the maximum of its abilities and takes
only what it “needs.” Like Big Foot, this being has never been seen,
but is assumed by many to exist. It is implicit in the newly passed Nancy Pelosi “health care” bill. We are all Marxo-Sapiens now.

This day may well have been baked into our national cake once
employers introduced health insurance as a tax free benefit during
WWII. Thus began the creation of the national illusion that one’s
medical care could be had without opportunity costs. It appears “free”
for many of those who have it. When we discover it is not free we think
a grave injustice has been perpetrated. Therefore, many believe those
who do not have it should also get it for “free.” Most people have
their medical expenses paid on their behalf by their employer, tax
free, and have no idea what medical care actually costs. There is
hardly a single other product or service (think food, iPods,
automobiles, Satellite TV, etc.) for which that statement can be made.
(See What Next: “Universal Food Insurance”? )

“Unfortunately, based on past experience, we also urge American Muslims, and those who may be perceived to be Muslim, to take appropriate precautions to protect themselves, their families and their religious institutions from possible backlash.”

This statement is designed to create and establish among Muslims the feeling they are victims within America. It also is meant to provide the basis for understanding why some lunatic who is Muslim might have reason to “snap.” This is not much different than the view, still held by a large minority of Americans (Reverend Wright anyone?) that 9/11 was simply America’s chickens coming home to roost.

District 23 in New York encompasses 11 counties is the most northern part of the state. Most of the district is further north than Toronto, Canada. It’s geographically large, about the size of Connecticut and Massachusetts combined. Much of it overlaps the beautiful and enormous Adirondack Park, the largest State or Federal park in the lower 48 states.

District 23’s land mass is approximately 1/3rd of New York State’s. Its population is only 1/29th. In a state where Barack Obama outperformed John McCain by 28 points, District 23 elected Republican Congressman John McHugh, now Obama’s Secretary of the Army. A Republican has represented the district since there was a Republican party. The last non-Republican elected to Congress was a member of the Whig Party. Of course, Obama’s choice of McHugh was not a cynical political choice made by Rahm Emmanuel, but one based on bipartisan merit alone. But cynical politics is not new. Losing this district was.

The Democratic victory was a disaster for the Republican Party. A small disaster — after all, it is only one district among 435 in the US– but a disaster never the less. It is also one where “lessons will be learned.” If those lessons are the wrong ones, then a small disaster will become a larger one. I already gave my pre-election opinion in Palin, the “Amiable Duncess”. I favored Hoffman. And while I still wish he won, I did not know what a bad candidate he was. That is not an excuse, just a statement of fact. The late Democratic Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill, famously quipped that “all politics was local”. In fact, that was told to him by his father when he lost his very first election. He lost it because he spent all his campaigning in precincts other than his own. Had he won his own precinct he would have won the election. He learned then, that first and foremost, a politician must be attuned to the issues most close to his constituency. From there, a foundation can be built.

October 28, 2009

CSI: Miami---Coincidence, or a purposeful attack on Whole Foods CEO John Mackey? Either way, this was surely an adolescent and silly attack on capitalism. Please see my essay on Big Hollywood ‘CSI: Miami’ Attacks ObamaCare Apostate

October 23, 2009

As I have said many times before in this blog, the Republican Party and the majority of Republican commentators wish that Sarah Palin would just go away. They don't like her, period. They share the same sensibility about her as do their Democratic opponents. They think she is unprepared, an intellectual lightweight, a prima donna, and unable to do anything but get 35% of the vote. They view her as a disaster for the party.

So, when Palin endorsed New York State Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, some of the usual suspects came out against her action. I think they had their feelings hurt when she stated that "and best of all, Hoffman is not a member of a political machine"--an obvious dig at the Republican Party. Doesn't anyone remember anything? Palin herself was not a member of a political machine. She won Alaska by beating the corrupt self dealing Republican political machine. Conservative Party candidate DougHoffman is in a close race in New York District 23 in the Adirondocks region (where coincidently I am writing this from in Lake Placid, New York, on a long weekend vacation) against liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava and Democrat Bill Owens.